


always us

by cylencia



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst and Feels, Introspection, Late Night Drives, M/M, There's a...Lot Going on Here, Vandalism, bittersweet feelings, cityscapes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:15:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27473380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cylencia/pseuds/cylencia
Summary: There is no plan here, no blueprint, there never was. Right here and now, in this shady alleyway of a town some kilometres away from Miyagi where the air smells like gasoline and cigarette smoke, all Oikawa knows is that he’s feelingtoo muchof everything, too much guilt, too much sadness, too much frustration and too much fear, and that the only thing that eases any of it is standing right here beside him, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and hands stained with colour, fluidly spraying patterns onto the wall as if it’s his last chance to do so. As if the world is going to end tomorrow and he’s making his last stand.(It's always them, despite everything. Iwaizumi and Oikawa.Hajime and Tooru.Always the two of them against the world.)
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	always us

The ceiling looks dead under his stare, bland and white and completely empty. There used to be more to it, glow-in-dark stars that he and Iwaizumi had put there years ago, and he remembers being seven and stacking up books on top of chairs on top of his bed and holding them there steady as Iwaizumi climbed up precariously to put those stars on the ceiling. And that’s where they had remained up until a few weeks ago when he had torn them all down in a fit of god only knows what. 

He blinks once, then twice, and his eyes _burn_ from keeping up the hollow stare for so long. The clock mocks him from the bedside table, _2:21 AM_. He _should_ be surprised, should be startled that evening has already rushed by along with half of the night in tow, but he isn’t. Remembers Hanamaki saying something along the lines of _time is a social construct, my man_ and Matsukawa replying with _well, this social construct better make room for lunch because I’m starving_ and he almost laughs.

He lays there, hands laced behind his head and eyes devoid of any expression, and he stares. Stares unseeingly and stares everywhere, desperately trying to avoid the neatly sealed envelope on his desk. He stares until his eyes sting, until he can’t breathe anymore because his heart suddenly feels too big in his ribcage, too heavy to carry. Then he gets up, fumbles blindly for his phone, dials a number he knows by heart, and waits.

He doesn’t speak when the line connects—he doesn’t have to. Iwaizumi breathes on the other end, quiet and steady and oh-so- _ familiar  _ that Oikawa almost wants to cry. Then there’s a sigh. “Fine, come outside.”

_ Come outside, I’m waiting for you. You’re insufferable, you know that? Come outside, and for the love of God, put on something warm, dumbass. _

Their conversations have always happened in layers.

They have been dancing around this for a while now, swaying precariously and just shy of tripping. But time is running out now and the fall is inevitable and Oikawa would much rather jump in headfirst on his own terms than be pulled in. 

So he puts the phone away and gets up, puts on his shoes and the white and teal jacket—because it’s still the warmest thing he owns despite carrying the weight of the past three years deep in its seams—and he slips out of the house.

Outside, Iwaizumi is waiting for him, like he always is, whether it be to walk home after volleyball practice, on the court for him to set the ball, on the couch for him to pick the same movie for the fifteenth goddamned time in a row, in the mornings to walk to school when they were ten years old, hands intertwined, all the way back to right when they were born. Throughout almost eighteen years of life, Hajime has always been waiting for Tooru. (For his part, Tooru has always, _always_ been getting back up, dusting himself off and catching up to his outstretched hand, shoulder bumping shoulder.)

The night air is startlingly cold, and he wraps the jacket tighter around himself as he steps out. Iwaizumi stands a few feet away, hands buried deep into the pockets of his own jacket as he leans against the old, beaten down Jeep that he’s had since forever. Tooru vaguely remembers the outdated Honda Civic that used to stand in his own garage more than a decade ago. He also remembers waking up late one Sunday afternoon to find the garage empty and his mother emptier, crying at the dining table as his sister desperately tried to pick up the pieces. The car never returned and neither did his father.

“You look like shit,” is the first thing Hajime says as he sees him approaching, fishing out the keys from his pocket. Tooru rolls his eyes as he goes around to the other side to open the door for himself.

“Gee, thanks, Iwa-chan. Right back at you.”

He laughs quietly as the engine whirs to life and as soon as they’re moving, Oikawa leans back and sighs deeply. From here, he can see the long, jagged mark on the bumper that they had failed to fully repair no matter how much they tried, and with a strange wistful tugging in his heart, he remembers the summer of their fifteenth year, when Hajime’s dad had offered to teach them both how to drive. Hajime had proved to be a very quick and diligent study. Tooru, on the other hand, had crashed into a pole, a ditch, and a trash can, all within minutes of each other and they had unanimously decided to never try again.

Even so, the inside of the vehicle feels almost like a second home, and how could it not, after the hours upon hours the two of them have spent in it together? Long afternoon drives that dissolved into lazy summer evenings spent running, running,  _ running _ away from everything, from people and papers and responsibilities, from awkward dinner tables and lonely bedrooms, everything and everyone but not each other. Never each other. Watching the sky darken from the windshield amongst a mess of soft breathing and intertwined hands until finally,  _ finally _ , their shuddering heartbeats find solace in each other.

How can the vehicle possibly feel like anything  _ but  _ home when it’s where both their hearts reside?

Iwaizumi leans back slightly, pushing one elbow out of the open window as he steps on the gas. Oikawa doesn’t ask him where they’re going. It’s half-past two in the morning and the world is fast asleep in warm beds and soft blankets and no one cares that they’re speeding out of town, hurtling down empty streets towards who knows what, and Oikawa doesn’t ask him where they’re going because it doesn’t matter—because he’ll follow him anywhere, really, but also because it doesn’t matter.

“You didn’t sleep,” he says, idly fiddling with his fingers. It’s not a question, and it isn’t supposed to be.

Hajime glances at him from the corner of his eye, barely for a second, before his gaze returns to the road. “You didn’t either.”

It’s an observation, plain and simple, but Oikawa hears the echoes behind it.  _ You couldn’t sleep, because you’re terrified of what tomorrow might bring, because you’re going to get up and leave and the past eighteen years will crumble behind you and that terrifies you to death. I didn’t sleep because it terrifies me to death too. _

Layers.

There’s a half-moon hanging up in the sky and they don’t stop until the small houses and the moonlit greens of the countryside fade away into the unforgiving grey of lonely cement buildings and wires tangled in phone towers.

The city welcomes them with sleepy arms and deserted streets. It's not a very good part of it, what with all the flickering street signs, broken windows and old, beaten down apartment complexes, but they're in the city nonetheless, far enough away from Miyagi that they can pretend they don't feel the metaphorical hands of the pieces of paper resting on their respective desks reaching out to grab the backs of their shirts.

_ Not yet. We still have the night. _

It’s only when Iwaizumi speaks that Oikawa realizes they’ve stopped, the interior of the car only lit up by the dim yellow of the streetlights filtering in through the window. 

“Let’s go,” he says, quiet as he opens the door, and like always, Oikawa follows without question. He still doesn’t know where they are or what they’re doing and Oikawa isn’t a particularly compliant or trusting person but this is  _ Hajime  _ they’re talking about. He would follow him anywhere, blind and deaf.

There’s a 24-hour convenience store right across the street, the lights on its overhead sign flickering in and out, too dim but also too bright in all the wrong places. They cross the road towards it and if Oikawa’s wrist  _ burns  _ where Iwaizumi’s hand encircles it, he doesn’t say anything.

Instead, he finds himself wondering idly—just for a moment—if there are 24-hour convenience stores in Argentina. The thought chases itself off as quickly as it had come. 

The middle-aged man behind the counter gives them a sleepy, cursory glance before dozing right back off. Oikawa wonders what they look like to him. Most likely like just a pair of troublesome teenagers stumbling through the night, maybe a little lost, maybe a little drunk, definitely a little in love, and just as doomed as every other pair that had ever passed through here. 

He tries to tamp down the thorns that seem to be growing in his throat and doesn’t say anything, just looks achingly at the spiky-haired boy with eyes the colour of pine forests and a heart too big for his body, and lets him take him by the hand and weave through the aisles. 

It’s Iwaizumi who speaks first. “You’re awfully silent for someone who usually doesn’t let me have a moment of peace. Aren’t you curious why we’re here?”

“We’re here already,” Oikawa murmurs absently. “So, does it even matter?”

And Oikawa wants to  _ laugh _ . He wants to laugh hard and loud and relentless at what he just said, at everything they have both said up until now because goddamnit, they’re  _ still  _ tiptoeing, still dancing at the edge of a cliff—and what a stupid idea  _ that  _ is, who in their right mind dances at the edge of a fucking cliff!?—but it’s too late to step back now. The elephant in the room has made a home there and no amount of talking or crying or trying is ever going to move it now. So, yeah, maybe it indeed does not matter.

Iwaizumi shrugs, scuffing to a stop as they reach the back corner of the store. “I guess not. Take your pick.”

It takes Oikawa a couple of seconds to bring himself back enough to realize what exactly he was being asked to take his pick of. There are lines upon lines of spray paint cans lining the shelves in front of him. He stares at them, tilts his head and almost lets out a small laugh because of course, trust Iwaizumi to always know just what to do. They walk back out with arms full of cans of white, gold, and teal.

It takes them a while to find a suitably secluded spot, a nearby alleyway beside the back entrance of an abandoned complex. There is a rusty fire escape ladder wrapping its way up the side of the bare brick building, and most of the windows are either broken or nailed shut with wooden planks. Even though the walls are already littered with a miscellaneous array of bland, ancient-looking graffiti, they’re old and faded enough to not pose a problem.

They set the cans down and once Iwaizumi has looked around to make sure they’re not immediately going to be mugged and stabbed to death, he rolls up the sleeves of his jacket. Oikawa mirrors the action before picking up a can and shaking it.

They keep at it for hours, the silence between them only broken by the shaking of metal cans of spray paint and the occasional  _ ‘hand me that one’ _ or  _ ‘careful there’ _ . There is no plan here, no blueprint, there never was. Right here and now, in this shady alleyway of a town some kilometres away from Miyagi where the air smells like gasoline and cigarette smoke, all Oikawa knows is that he’s feeling  _ too much  _ of everything, too much guilt, too much sadness, too much frustration and too much fear, and that the only thing that eases any of it is standing right here beside him, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and hands stained with colour, fluidly spraying patterns onto the wall as if it’s his last chance to do so. As if the world is going to end tomorrow and he’s making his last stand.

And it doesn’t matter whether Argentina has 24-hour convenience stores or not, it  _ doesn’t matter  _ because he can never picture himself doing this anywhere else, with anybody else.

They heave exhausted sighs once they’re done. All of a sudden, Oikawa feels like he can breathe again, the metal vice around his heart loosening just a little bit, because they’ve both finally taken everything they had been carrying on their shoulders and turned it into something  _ real  _ and concrete. The wall in front of them looks downright  _ alive _ .

Swirls of white and gold and teal, intercrossing among various places of lights and shadows, like a large piece of fabric painted onto the wall, and on it, in bold, white kanji— 

_ “コートを制す” _

_ Rule the Court. _

By the time Oikawa finally lets go of the can of spray paint, his fingers have gone numb and his chest feels so full, he can barely breathe. Iwaizumi puts a hand on his shoulder and he shudders underneath Silence, lonely in a way only the silence of an urban alleyway miles away from home at four in the morning can be, stretches on for a while.

“I know it doesn’t mean much, doesn’t really change anything,” Iwaizumi mumbles finally, “not really, but I… goddamnit, Tooru, I just wanted—”

“Shut up, Hajime.”

“I… excuse me?”

He shrugs. “I said shut up. It means  _ everything _ .”

And it does, at the moment, at least. Sure, it doesn’t change anything, not  _ really _ . It won’t give them a second chance at everything that they did wrong, it won’t ease all the hardships looming in the uncertainty of their future, and it certainly doesn’t do anything to lighten the soul-crushing weight of the envelopes waiting for them back home. Home that won’t be home for much longer, anyway.

But in this moment, this little thing means  _ so much  _ to Oikawa that he thinks he can almost cry. He knows it’s not going to remain there forever. It will brave the elements and the stares and the harsh light, the colours will fade into muted greys with time and eventually, someone else will come along and paint something over it. Just like Hajime and Tooru had painted it over something else. But until then,  _ at least until then…  _ it’s going to be okay.

The fire escape ladder on the side of the building is unreliable at best, asking for death at worst, but they take the risk and climb up anyway. There's just something about Hajime that makes Tooru feel as if he's invincible—as if he can conquer the world so long as  _ this _ does not change. 

They sit and watch the sun rise in the distance from the rooftop of the four-storeyed building they had just defaced, hands brushing against each other’s and feet dangling off the low boundary where they’re perched precariously. 

"Do you regret it?" Iwaizumi asks after a while, eyes downcast and looking at the deserted street below. "That last set?"

_ Do you regret making that last set to 'me'? _ is what he's actually asking and Tooru has known him too well and for too long to not catch it. He pretends to think about it, chin balanced on his palm as he leans slightly forward, before he finally looks up at the boy beside him from the corner of his eye.

"No," he says simply. Leaning sideways, he brushes his fingers against Hajime’s cheek. “I don’t.” 

The slanted rays of the sun breaking over the skyline don’t really do anything to ease the chill in his bones, but they do light up the green of Hajime’s eyes in a way that has Tooru holding his breath. _ So be it, then _ , he thinks. 

At sunrise, right here on the rooftop of this dilapidated building some kilometres away from Miyagi where the air smells like gasoline and cigarette smoke—and longing that feels more like a lifelong ache deep in his bones, Oikawa too will make his last stand.

So, he leans in and kisses Hajime, light as a feather and soft and true on the lips. Hajime’s skin is warm beneath his fingers, a lifeline reaching beneath the waters. The lighthouse in the storm that has always been Tooru’s life. 

_ You, you, you. _

_ It’s always you. _

When he lets go, Hajime blinks slowly, cheeks a little flushed and eyes a little hazy. A little wide and a lot wonderstruck. Tooru smiles a little, hand just beginning to fall away from where it rested on Hajime’s cheek, smiles  _ truer  _ when Hajime catches it in his own.

_ Always us. _

The slanted rays of sunlight bathe the concrete jungle in a strangely mellow shade of yellow, completely out of place in the dead grey landscape. But then, perhaps even the harshest, cruelest of things deserve to be treated with kindness sometimes.

There is a plane ticket to Argentina waiting for Oikawa on his desk when he gets back home. The flight is in a few hours. In the house across from his, an acceptance letter sits in Iwaizumi’s room, his name in big, bold letters right under the UC Irvine logo. 

It’s only now that the finality dawns on him. Their time has run out.

Iwaizumi hops down from where he was sitting and holds a hand out to him.  _ Let’s go home _ , it says. Oikawa looks at his outstretched hand for a moment before he looks back up at him, at the olive green of his eyes catching the sunlight, the sweep of his lashes casting shadows on his cheeks, and lips just beginning to curve in the ghost of a smile. He takes his hand and hops off too, And if the watery melancholy of his own smile mirrors that of Hajime, down to the last tremble of his lips, they don’t mention it.

He falls asleep in the car on the way home, to the jazzy tune of some old Billie Holiday song playing on the radio, and thoughts of forest green eyes and catching bugs in a garden years ago.

_ * * * _

* * *

_ “I’m picturing us on rooftops in strange cities, with strange people, and us. Always us. _

* * *

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, I hope you enjoyed this colossal mess of a fic :'D When I said there's a lot going on here, I wasn't kidding. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say I was only able to convey about half of all the messy emotions that I actually wanted to ;___; 
> 
> In any case, if you enjoyed this, please consider leaving a comment/kudos! Come scream at me about IwaOi on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/cylencia) and [Tumblr.](https://lawliette.tumblr.com/)


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